In the latest case, Duncan defends his 1999 deal to lease the Col. Joseph A. Belt Junior High School in Wheaton to a Jewish school, called a yeshiva, a month after Abramoff-related clients in Guam and Saipan poured $20,000 into Duncan's campaign. Duncan gave the private school an option to buy the MCPS property.

Duncan says in the June 9 Washington Post that he did the deal to fight the neighborhood blight of a vacant school and to fight "the objections of anti-Semitic neighbors."

"The deal's leading opponents say they were motivated by a desire to keep the school in public hands, not by anti-Semitism, and angrily dismissed Duncan's charge this week," the Post reports. "Some of the opponents - as well as a lawyer who represented them, Norman Knopf - are Jewish."